I'm looking for Shangri-la advice as well now. What defense levels are good benchmarks to aim for?

I thought my current team was doing pretty well: Kwame(C), Jan-Piet, and Maria, with defenses (S/A) of 35/45, 64/51, and 35/60 respectively (Adventure Armor, Adventure Memento, Legendary Armor respectively). I always try to balance Speech Defense and Armor as best I can because enemies will use both types of attack. I could instead boost Kwame & Maria to have Speech Defense in the 55-65 range, but their Armor would be at 10-15. So they'd trade being two-shot by green demons for being two-shot (or quite possibly one-shot) by red demons or Tommy.

I did beat Shangri-la once before, with Emilia(C), Charles, and Molly. Also a Status team, so they had no more gold than Kwame's team (quite possibly less) and would also have been in mostly Adventure-class defensive items. And Molly & Emilia aren't notably more defensively capable than Kwame & Maria. So I'm not sure why they had so much easier fights against the demons...

Do the demon groups spawn based on the party's preferred mood? Kwame is consistently facing 4 green demons and one red demon, and getting wrecked by them. There's just not enough space between them to polish off the pair of green demons on one side without the two green and one red from the other side coming along to drop someone. As I recall Emilia's team faced groups of two green, two blue, one red, so taking down just one green demon on the first turn made the fight pretty straightforward.

This is why I only do Shangri-la in Discovery mode - at least I can give up and go somewhere else to finish the game. :/

I'll have to admit I haven't done Shangri'la in quite a while, but that team sounds like it should be able to survive well enough. However, your approach in playing the encounter actually matters a lot more than the gear you're using.

Most encounters in Shangri'la are actually fixed, with only the layout of the map changing (as far as I know, at least). There are two common encounters: one with 4 greens and 1 red, and one with 2 green, 2 blue and 1 red.

For the green demons, a proactive approach is necessary. Stay out of range where possible, and when that's not possible make sure to take as many of them out before they get a chance to hurt you. Area of effect attacks are a big help here, especially if you can stack two of them to take down a group at once. If they can one-shot the green demons, even better. Ignore the red and blue demons if necessary - the green ones are the real danger most of the time.

In general when going Shangri'la, favor Speech Defense over Armor. Most aggressive attacks are actually melee-only, which means it can be mitigated more easily through choke-points and simply running away. Grit can also help, but isn't reliable enough. I generally stray away from it except for the highest two tiers of boots. (because they actually give a noticeable amount of armor/speech defense in addition)

If you keep having trouble, try taking a character with big area attacks (Agatha, Yvonne, Charles, Harry, Hatice, Dolores, Kiwi), or a character with an ability that stuns (Anna, Earl). Either killing a few green demons outright or just taking them out of the fight for just one turn can make a world of difference.

And last of all, don't give up! These are some of the hardest encounters in the game, and are meant to test your tactical skills. If you fail, don't be afraid to reload and try the same encounter again with a different approach - you might be surprised how much of a different small decisions can make!

Thanks! Sounds like the key difference between my visits there was Charles and his AOEs more than stats, then. With a corollary of "don't go to Shangri-la if you don't have AOEs or stuns". Staying out of range of four green demons just isn't possible unless the tactical map is generated *very* favorably.

An amount of save-reloading that makes me a bit uncomfortable even for Discovery mode got me through eventually. I ended up just going around one encounter, and save-scumming another (directly in the path to Key #2, so not skippable) until the tactical map layout let me beat them. That Mount Kailash place they kept talking about was right next to Key #3, so that was a cool way of settling the demon encounters permanently! :-) Rivaleux cost me 3 resolve at the end, so this absolutely would have been a loss doing it "legit" and grinding through the green demons without reloads. Technically my first 9000+ score but not one I can take very seriously for obvious reasons. At least I got a couple more crew cards for the future.

Worblehat wrote:Thanks! Sounds like the key difference between my visits there was Charles and his AOEs more than stats, then. With a corollary of "don't go to Shangri-la if you don't have AOEs or stuns". Staying out of range of four green demons just isn't possible unless the tactical map is generated *very* favorably.

Actually after revisiting Shangri'la (just as a test run), my memory was indeed a little foggy. Most AoE isn't going to be very effective against the green demons since they have really high speech defense. An aggressive approach will have a much easier time, so most fighters should be able to one-shot them - same goes for characters with the Impress friendly ability.

Mood-switching is key to survival, since the demons will, after one turn, go with whatever mood you're currently in. Characters that are missing a reliable attack in one of the three moods might have a harder time doing this. The same goes for the demons' resistances. Green demons are weak to Impress and aggressive attacks. Blue demons are weak to Excite and Encourage. Red demons are weak to Sadden and Enrage, but immune to Impress. Hence, diversifying the attacks your team has available is important.

Harry and Hatice should still trivialize the fights, since they can pick off the green demons from afar with ease. Same goes for Anna and Earl.

In case of your team, Kwame will have to do some heavy lifting as a healer. He's not a very versatile character since his only decent attack is his Excite, which your really only want to use if it finishes off an enemy. If you've taken his 'Catch the Kwame' ability his Enrage also becomes useful, so that could help.

Maria should be able to one-shot one demon a turn as long as you can protect her with the others. With a decent weapon, both her Seduce and her double-Sadden should take someone out. If Jan-Piet can also one-shot one, a decent opener would be aggressive into 2x devious to immediately change the mood back into equal. If that doesn't work, start by being friendly, perhaps using Jan-Piet's Sadden to soften someone up for next turn, when the demons switch to friendly and going aggressive is super effective.

That went a little longer than intended, but I hope this gives some insight in how to tackle these. :)

Yeah, it's very challenging though, you really have to play the devious game or else I find it can be quite challenging.
The way I did it was through a really cheesy strategy where you pick Harry as your team captain (due to his double money from treasure tokens) and you pick Charles and either Dolores or Agatha after (depending on preference). The two you must have though are Charles and Harry, as Charles has a special campfire story where he can gain treasure tokens using insight after missions (which harry makes double use out of), hence you can be completely stocked out by the 3rd or 4th adventure in terms of combat stats due to items.